Becoming a Dragon

“Are you going to keep this?” the nurse asked us when she shaved off that tiny tuft of hair for the first time after the New Year. 

“Of course!” 

We had already prepared a cloth pouch. It didn’t matter much to me, but the older generation saw significance in such things. It was said that a baby’s first strand of hair they were born with captures remnants of their vital essence, and hence should be carefully preserved. So I followed the tradition, taking that small tuft of hair, rolling it into a ball, stuffing it into the pouch, and sewing it shut. There are many similar customs in our tradition. For instance, a child’s first lost tooth should also be kept, often placed in a gourd. 

“He’s crying again. Can you get up and check on him?” 

She often said that to me. In those first days after his birth, he had trouble sleeping. I had no choice but to rub my eyes, crawl out from under the covers, and turn on a small light to see what was wrong with him. Most of the time, it wasn’t hunger. We always fed him before bed. It was probably because he needed a diaper change. Sometimes, it wasn’t even that complicated—just a gentle pat on his back would lull him back to sleep. It was so exhausting that I could barely keep my eyes open during the day at the research institute. At that time, our project was at a critical stage, so I often fuelled myself with coffee. That was when I often prayed that he would grow up faster.

And then, in the blink of an eye, he had grown up. He learned to speak, eat on his own, and use the bathroom, which saved us a lot of trouble. By the time he turned three and was able to go to kindergarten, our lives finally returned to normal. We could once again devote most of our time to our own pursuits. Even so, once a child is born, it becomes inevitable that you have to educate him, filling his little mind with knowledge. It’s a responsibility you can’t shirk, like paying taxes as a citizen. For me, that meant answering all his endless questions. 

“What is a dragon?” he asked me. 

“A dragon? Where did you see a dragon?” 

“In the twelve Chinese Zodiacs.” 

“It’s an imaginary mythical creature.” 

“Do dragons really exist?” 

“No,” I answered. And that was the truth—at least, at that time, dragons didn’t exist yet. 

“But all the other animals in the zodiac are real… Why does the dragon look like this? Horns like a deer, eyes like a rabbit, body like a snake, claws like a tiger, ears like an ox…” He read the description from the picture book aloud. “The dragon seems to be a combination of the other eleven animals in the zodiac.”

Later did I come to know that the dragon was indeed like that, a fusion of many creatures. Past imaginations of the dragon is so close to the real one— could this be a coincidence, or was it perhaps… an inevitability? I still don’t know the answer to this question.

“Wake up.” She tugged on my arm when I was deep in thought. “They’re here.”

I took a deep breath and woke up. Two middle-aged men in suits were standing by my bed. I knew who they were and what they wanted. 

“We’d like to have a word with you,” said the older of the two. 

“Please have a seat. Sasha, could you bring them a chair?”

“We’ll get straight to the point,” he said. “Do you know where it is?”

“It?”

“The dragon”

“It’s in the sea, don’t you know? After escaping from the lab, it flew all the way eastward before plunging into the Yellow Sea. It was foggy and rainy that day, but you could still see it clearly; the radar showed that it had dived straight into the Yellow Sea, which connects to the Pacific Ocean.”

“Of course, we know that,” he frowned. “What I’m asking is, more specifically, which part of the Pacific? Didn’t it tell you?”

“No.”

“You really don’t remember? Why don’t you think again? What were you discussing during the missing twelve minutes and four seconds when the conversation in the lab wasn’t recorded? Why did it figure out how to escape right after you talked? Didn’t it tell you where it was headed?” He raised his voice, but I wasn’t buying it. I’ve been through this many times. 

“It can always find a way to escape. It’s highly intelligent and capable of flight and swimming, with a smooth body that can charge and discharge electricity, much like an eel using chemical energy. You know as well as I do that a short circuit would paralyse the lab’s security system. The ceiling window is electrically controlled. I warned you before—it would find its way out.” I repeated the same lines as before, knowing that they had no evidence and didn’t dare do anything to me.

“Where did it go? This is crucial. You know better than anyone how many years it will take to perform another fusion experiment like that. What did you two talk about?” He kept pushing for answers, but I wasn’t going to give him anything.

“If you find it, what will you do with it?” I asked in return. 

“We… will bring it back. Its value is immeasurable.” 

“Really? The decision’s been made?”

“Not exactly. Some believe that experiment was a complete mistake and now it’s time to correct it. It’s not my decision to make, but theirs. But its escaping into the Pacific is undoubtedly the worst-case scenario. Who knows what consequences that might bring?” His eyelids drooped slightly, revealing a noticeably calmer look.

“You can send submarines to search for it, since we have plenty of them. What about satellites? Couldn’t they help?” I suggested.

He shook his head. We both knew that the Pacific is, in a way, even more immense than outer space, given current human technology. We can’t even find the wreckage of lost planes, let alone track down a large creature capable of deep-sea diving. As far as I could foresee, technological efforts alone wouldn’t be enough. Humanity is powerless against it, and rightfully so, for it is a dragon, a majestic being destined to rise into the clouds and plunge into the sea, just as the ancient legends have always portrayed. It represents the ultimate end. Humanity has no right to cage it. 

“It has intelligence, but does it care about you?”

“Me?”

“I’m not sure if it cares about you, but you certainly care for it, don’t you? Perhaps even more than for human interests. But Mr. Yang, as a humanist, my only concern is that allowing it to roam freely in the Pacific is an undeniable threat to humanity. One way or another, I will bring it back. As for what happens next, that’s beyond my control.” Before leaving, the man left me a note with his contact details. His name was Fang Hong. He told me that if I ever changed my mind, I could reach out to him at any time.

She casually threw the note into her bag, mixing it with all the other bits and pieces. That was exactly where it belonged, like a ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to see daylight for decades. I had no intention of changing my mind—his contact information was totally useless to me.

All natural life forms exist for a reason—I came to grasp that fact only much later. Whether humans recognise it or not, they have existed long before our awareness, much like the solar system, which had been functioning for billions of years before humanity understood its model. In the immense expanse of time, the history of humanity is merely a blink of an eye. Humans are intelligent and capable of understanding many things, yet they are limited when faced with the overwhelming mysteries that lie beyond their comprehension.

For instance, at that time, we couldn’t fully comprehend what it meant for all the viruses to merge together. The discovery of the ultimate virus was purely accidental—it simply came into our view one day.

“This is a miracle,” Lu Chen said once again in the lab. Over the past few years, he had repeated this sentence countless times.

As the most unique and simplest organisms in the natural world, humans have currently identified 579 types of viruses, including double-stranded, single-stranded, RNA, and DNA forms… These viruses exhibit remarkable diversity, with some taking the form of regular spheres while others resemble lunar landing capsules. From this perspective, they have diverged for a long time, with differences far greater than those between humans and octopuses. How could they possibly merge together? It doesn’t make sense, yet we indeed observed this phenomenon.

Yes, it was a phenomenon that was completely unrelated to anything we had done in the lab. Two closely related viruses first fused their genes, producing fertile offspring. Then, the offspring possessed even greater genetic compatibility and could produce fertile descendants with more distantly related viruses. When we first discovered this phenomenon, we thought they were viruses leaked from a human laboratory. However, it wasn’t long before we concluded that humans lacked the ability to create such a virus—it was purely a product of nature. Before we could fully understand it, it had already spread widely through the ecosystem—via air, liquids, aerosols… It had all the means of viral transmission. By the time we recognised this phenomenon, we were all already hosts—myself, Lu Chen, Sasha and even him, along with possibly every living organism on this planet.

We named the virus from the final offspring the ultimate virus, as it combined the characteristics of all viruses, making it truly deserving of that name.

“What should we do?” This was the first thought that crossed our minds. Could we quarantine it? It was too late for that. Should we try to develop an antidote and find ways to eliminate the virus? That would likely take a considerable amount of time and success wasn’t guaranteed. We panicked for a while—who knew how terrifying an ultimate virus that had merged the genes of all viruses could be? Could it mutate to have a fatality rate even higher than Ebola?

Luckily, the ultimate virus turned out to be unexpectedly mild.

It wouldn’t kill its hosts or cause them to sneeze. This made sense, as killing the host is an evolutionary flaw for viruses, a flaw that has disappeared in the gene fusion process. At the same time, it inherited the best traits from its parent viruses—remarkable heat and cold resistance and transmission abilities surpassing those of all coronaviruses, along with an astonishing ability to parasitise across species barriers. The ability to infect hosts across species surprised us the most, as it could infect everything from humans to insects without experiencing any negative effects.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do,” I soon admitted that humans were powerless against this virus.

“What does it mean?” Lu Chen often asked himself in the lab. He was obsessed with the ultimate virus.

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I shrugged and told him. “Over time, its superior adaptability will replace all viruses on Earth. There will be no more AIDS, Ebola or influenza in the world.”

“What if it mutates and suddenly becomes deadly… ah, never mind, that’s impossible. It’s already stabilised. Besides, it’s unlikely that all the viruses on Earth could mutate simultaneously,” Lu Chen muttered to himself.

“Maybe it’s a normal natural process, where all viruses might originate from a single type, and now they’re converging back into one,” I pondered.

“There’s still so much we don’t know,” he lamented.

Lu Chen was right. More than a century has passed since viruses were first identified by humans. Despite countless scientists dedicating their lives to studying these tiny creatures, our understanding of them remains remarkably limited.

During that time, I published many papers, but they were just papers—insignificant explorations into the wonders of nature. Lu Chen, on the other hand, became wholly consumed by the puzzles, pouring his every effort into untangling them, losing himself entirely in the pursuit. But I was not like Lu Chen. I understood that the journey to comprehend nature is infinite, while life itself is finite. From the beginning to the end of life, the things we cherish can vanish in an instant. Beyond science, I have my family. I love them. They provide another layer of meaning to my life.

“Dad, the book says that Argentine ants and the Pheidole ants are destined for conflict. They occupy the same ecological niche and are thus irreconcilably opposed to each other.”

He grew up devouring books, much like I did in my younger days. Amidst the pages of countless volumes, he unearthed his fascination—insects. Those peculiar, otherworldly creatures enchanted him, and he amassed a collection of their specimens, perhaps influenced by Fabre’s Souvenirs Entomologiques, a book he held closest to his heart.

“Is that so? Do they actually fight?”

“The book says so. They are closely related species, but war between them never ends unless one wipes out the other. But look, they’re getting along well in the glass box,” he said, pointing at the glass container.

“Don’t do that. You shouldn’t keep them together. They’ll eat each other.”

“But they really seem to be getting along.”

“No, don’t do that.” I said as I was about to attend a meeting. “By the time I come back at 7.30 p.m., those ants must have been separated. You’re not a kid anymore; ants aren’t toys for playing war games.”

I didn’t allow him to argue otherwise. Curiosity is valid, but a respect for life holds greater significance.

When I returned home that evening, I found that there were two glass boxes of ants on the dining table, so I assumed he had taken care of it.

“Good job! The ants will thank you,” I said, taking off my hat and walking into his bedroom. He was already in bed but was still awake, reading under the night light.

“You said you’d be back by 7.30 p.m.”

“Yeah… the meeting ran over; there were some urgent matters.” I changed the topic. “What are you reading? The Great Learning? Is that assigned by your teacher? Where are you at?” 

“Things have their root and branches. Affairs have their beginning and end,” he pointed out. That was a line from The Great Learning.

“Indeed, everything has a beginning and an end. The Confucian scholars were aware of this truth during the Spring and Autumn Period.” 

“Is that so? Many things have beginnings but do not finish.” He became intrigued and began to discuss this issue with me. That was the time when he was most curious and vibrant.

“For example?” 

“For example, that.” He pointed at the evolutionary tree diagram on the wall.

I had bought that for him when he was four years old, and it had been hanging on the wall ever since. We believed it would serve an educational purpose. At the very bottom of the evolutionary tree was the oldest and simplest prokaryotic life, which formed the root of the tree. From there, the roots branched out slowly into various forms of life—plants, animals, microorganisms. From the animal branch, it further split into arthropods, vertebrates, and so on…It truly was a beautiful diagram. All forms of life nurtured by our beloved planet essentially evolved from single-celled organisms, echoing the sentiment expressed in The Tao-te Ching, which states that “Tao creates One; One creates Two; Two creates Three; Three creates All things.” In a biological sense, the “One” refers to single-celled life.

“It has a beginning, which is prokaryotic life. But what’s the end?” 

“Humans,” I pointed to the top of the evolutionary tree, where a man and a woman were depicted. They were clothed, creating a stark contrast with the illustrations present in other parts of the tree.

“Humans are the end?” 

“Yes. Humans have created civilisation. We are unique.” 

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head. “Humans are not the end. We are just another leaf on the evolutionary tree. To the Earth, humans are no different from ants.” 

“That sounds quite like Laozi’s view,” I said, patting his head. “Heaven and Earth are impartial; they treat all of creation as straw dogs.” 

“What? Where’s that quote from?” 

“You have plenty of books left to read. Now it’s time to turn off the lights and get some rest,” I said with a grin, flipping the switch.

“Dad, the Argentine ants and Pheidole ants are really getting along well,” he said to me in the darkness. 

I was slightly puzzled but decided not to discuss it further with him. When I returned to the living room, I found that beside the two boxes of ants, there was also a book with a bookmark stuck in it.

“The Argentine ants are quite aggressive toward other ant colonies. They will locate the enemy’s nest and send out soldier ants to launch an attack… The Pheidole ants usually adopt a passive defence strategy, but occasionally, they will initiate an attack in advance…” The book detailed the wars between the ants using not only text but also images. I recognised the two types of ants from the pictures—the Pheidole ant is slender, with a spiny back and an oval-shaped head, while the Argentine ant is larger and looks more coordinated. Upon closer inspection, I realised that he hadn’t separated them; instead, he had created a control group using two ant boxes—one box contained mixed ants, while the other only housed Argentine ants. The mixed ants did not attack each other. On the contrary, they got along very well. The smaller Pheidole ants comfortably nestled in the little nests made by the Argentine ants, as if they belonged to the same group.

How strange… Were they always like this? Was the account in the book merely an exception? Or was the book completely wrong? Did humans misunderstand the wars between ants? I recorded a video of the two types of ants coexisting peacefully and emailed it to Steve Simon, the author of the book. I was as curious as my child, wondering why these two species of ants no longer harmed each other.

Just as I expected, the spread of the ultimate virus was exponential; before we even recognised it, it had already permeated the entire ecosystem.

“What will this lead to?” Lu Chen often questioned, as his computer continuously processed the simulation results.

The answer was nothing, or so it seemed. There were no large-scale outbreaks, nor were there any diseases caused by this virus. A super virus that spanned all species suddenly appeared in nature, but it turned out to be unexpectedly mild, merely parasitising its hosts without exerting any effects. We certainly didn’t gain any superpowers from it; we’re still just ourselves.

Research continued, albeit at a much slower pace than the spread of the ultimate virus. We microbiologists, faced with the truth of nature, felt like archaeologists deciphering cuneiform, with most of our papers remaining speculative. To be honest, the emergence of the ultimate virus shattered many existing theories, leaving numerous scholars disheartened.

During that time, I was so consumed with work that I almost forgot about the Argentine and Pheidole ants. And he seemed to have forgotten about them too. His academic workload began to increase, and by the time he reached fifth grade, his subjects expanded from three to five, with history and political science being added to the original curriculum. As leisure time grew limited, he gradually distanced himself from those insects.

However, Steve Simon had not forgotten my email.

Sometime later, I received a lengthy email containing many attachments of literature in my inbox. Simon first affirmed the questions I raised and attempted to provide some explanations. For example, he suggested that specific environments might affect the pheromone perception of insects and advised me to pay special attention to temperature and humidity when raising ants. At the same time, he made a reasonable explanation that Pheidole ants are quite intelligent; some may steal the pheromones of Argentine ants to disguise themselves as “spy” ants. But at the end of the letter, Simon wrote:

“All the above is based on empirical speculation and could be wrong. Perhaps the ants are no longer the same ants they once were. If you wish to understand this issue further, I suggest you look at the literature I’ve sent. The insect kingdom may be undergoing an evolutionary revolution.”

Revolution—Simon’s choice of words was interesting. What exactly qualifies as an evolutionary revolution? The mass extinction event of the late Triassic? The rise of mammals? Is the insect kingdom currently experiencing a mass extinction or a great flourishing?

I clicked on those documents, and what I saw astonished me:

“Fertile Offspring from the Combination of Cicadas and Silkworms”, “Observations on Species Combination in the Conocephalus Genus of the Tettigoniidae Family Within Order Orthoptera”, “The Fusion of the Shanxi Wolf Spider and the Wang’s Wolf Spider” …

Although the insect species mentioned in the literature varied, they all described the same theme: closely related insect species had broken through their reproductive isolation. For example, in one of the papers, the Shanxi wolf spider and the Wang’s wolf spider are two species that diverged around several million years ago. However, for unknown reasons, they have merged again, producing offspring that inherit the biological characteristics of both spiders and can healthily reproduce. Moreover, offsprings exhibit greater genetic compatibility and can breed with more distantly related spiders.

This could certainly be termed an evolutionary revolution.

Reproductive isolation, the impenetrable barrier between species, had collapsed overnight in the insect world? Humans have spent an extended period attempting to bridge the reproductive isolation, such as breeding a liger. Yet those monstrous hybrids are forever sterile and plagued by various health issues.

Is this only happening in the insect world? After reading those documents, I began to feel as worried as Lu Chen. For scholars like us, it felt as though we woke up one morning to find the sun revolving around the Earth, making it the centre of the solar system. But even then, the world continued to function normally, with no significant changes.

In fact, it seemed to have no impact on the world.

At 8 a.m. in the morning, twenty million residents of this metropolis woke up and flooded into the subway, heading to work. Gradually, the city’s transportation system eased. By 6 p.m. in the evening, people got off work and children got out of school, marking another wave of rush hour. Our society operated steadily in this manner. Some of us realised that the Earth’s ecosystem was undergoing profound changes. But most people continued their usual lives. For the average person, insect hybridisation and the ultimate virus were merely trivial tech news that could be easily ignored.

“Is everything alright with your work?” she asked me.

“There are… some unexplainable new phenomena,” That’s the best description I can offer, since Sasha did not work in the biological field.

“How’s school?” I always asked him the same question during dinner.

“Everything’s good,” His response was brief, unlike the chattiness of his childhood.

“Did your teachers praise you?”

“Teachers don’t praise people every day.”

Our conversation came to a halt, and I didn’t know what else to ask. After finishing the meal, he set down his bowl and returned to his room.

“How’s he doing at school?” I asked her after he left.

“Pretty good. He just won an award…” she began to chatter on. I listened while eating. Most of my understanding of him came through this indirect way.

Everything was good. Back at that time, we were free from financial pressure. We’ve got a house and a car, both my parents and Sasha’s parents in good health. Aside from the bottleneck in my research, I didn’t have to worry about anything else in life. That was ordinary happiness.

But everything has a beginning and an end. We don’t know how long happiness can last, but it will eventually come to an end.

It was just three o’clock in the afternoon when Fang Hong left—perfect timing to go out for a stroll. Having just drank some water, I was worried my prostate would act up again in a few hours. I had to rely on her assistance to rush to the toilet and endure the painful act of urination several times a day. By this age, my organs had already failed, but thankfully, the doctors could accurately diagnose the illness and provide the right treatment approaches. It was not like the old days. It’s said that in the mid-twentieth century, people believed radium could cure cancer and carried radioactive materials with them all the time, which only aggravated the illness. This was always the case—ignorance leads to errors.

She nodded and helped me onto the wheelchair along with a nurse, then we went out to the hospital courtyard for a walk. The sunlight was warm, bathing us in its glow.

“I’m a bit worried,” she said. “What that guy said before he left carried an underlying message.”

“Don’t worry. The Pacific is vast, with over ninety percent of its area unexplored by humans. Trying to find it with submarines and radar is like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“What did he mean by asking if it cares about you?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it care about you?”

“I… maybe… I’m not sure. We spent some time together, and it had a strange sense of affinity for me. They say some birds will recognise the first animal they see at birth as their mother. It has integrated avian genes and might have such tendencies as well,” I recalled, tilting my head. “It… I’m not sure, but I have a strange feeling that it seems to know me.”

“You’re not sure?”

“It’s just a vague feeling.”

We strolled leisurely, enjoying the warmth of the sun on our skin. The inpatient department was in the southeast corner of the hospital, where only old folks like us resided. We walked all the way to the northwest section of the hospital, where the outpatient department for young people was located, bustling with middle-aged parents and their adolescent children. These kids were there for treatment or, rather, correction. They didn’t have physical ailments; instead, they needed to correct ‘sexual psychological issues’ and had to come regularly to receive medication for control and correction.

“This absurdity is still ongoing,” I said to Sasha.

“Maybe they are right?” she replied.

“I hope so. If they are right… I truly wish they are…” my voice gradually diminished. “But time will prove everything.”

Yes, how I wished we were wrong and they were right. That way, those young people wouldn’t be harmed by treatment. But time will prove everything, just like the story of radium, when people carried it everywhere they went, inevitably leading to bad consequences. Future generations would comprehend the repercussions and realise how their predecessors erred out of ignorance.

Sasha sighed and turned the wheelchair in another direction. We left the outpatient department for sexual psychology correction. Those children receiving their medication just reminded me of painful memories.

Suddenly, there was a loud thud.

“Oh my god—what happened—”

Soon, a crowd quickly gathered not far away, while shouts and cries filled the air. I tugged at Sasha’s hand, urging her to go see what had happened. She left me and quickly ran over, squeezing into the crowd. Soon, several security guards arrived to restore order at the scene as the crowd grew larger and larger, and before long, she emerged from the throng, covering her mouth with her hand, eyes slightly red.

“Let’s go…” Her voice trembled.

“What happened?”

“A young man jumped from above…” Her voice trailed off. I took a deep breath, pressing her palm gently to soothe her.

Such things were still happening, and there was nothing we could do to change that, just like in the past.

Who can forgive our sins, and who will pardon our mistakes?

We returned to the ward without any mood to bask in the sun. My prostate indeed acted up as soon as I entered the room, I squatted over the toilet, gripping the handle and using all my strength to force the urine out of my body. Damn it, is this some sort of punishment for me? I’ve got cancer, which is a reminder that humanity is susceptible to it as an imperfect species. We are not like dragons, who inherit the biological traits of sharks and blue whales, allowing them to remain free from cancer forever. It is a superior species compared to humans, far superior, which is why they are going to great lengths to find it. Humans will never allow their position to be shaken, which explains why those young people must undergo corrective treatment.

“Ah, ah…” I gripped the door handle, unable to suppress a low groan. As urine flowed out, the pain gradually intensified, reaching a peak. It took some time for the pain to subside before my nerves dulled. Yet the pain never fully fades; it always leaves a mark. So is the case with the suffering of cancer and the pain of losing a loved one. I pushed the door open, feeling dazed. I wished my nerves would dull a bit more. That way, the painful memories of the past wouldn’t keep surfacing in my mind.

But it was useless, as memories always surfaced regardless of my will.

During those times, salaries and stock fluctuations were always prioritised over cutting-edge biological discoveries for most people. No one cared that some species of insects had broken through reproductive isolation. Moreover, the government didn’t want the public to panic, so calm life ran on.

About five years has passed just like that. The ultimate virus remained exceptionally stable and mild, without any mutations. As for the insects… more than 99.999% of them retained their original forms, while the offspring of the chimeric insects were still extremely rare. These closely related species already occupied similar ecological niches, showing no impact to the overall food chain. For Sasha and me, moving from thirty-five to forty years old, there was hardly any change. You know, middle age was such a time of stability and boredom.

However, the transition from ten to fifteen years old marked profound growth for a boy. Before you knew it, you had to regard him as a young man.

“You might want to have ‘the talk’ with him,” Sasha said.

“About what? his grades?”

“You know, the talk.” Sasha stepped on the kitchen bin’s peddle and pointed to a crumpled, sticky tissue amidst the garbage. “That’s not ours, and it’s not flu season.”

“Oh… I see,” I said. “That’s quite normal; he’s reaching puberty. What do you want me to talk to him about?”

“Don’t let it affect his studies. He’s spending too much time in front of the screen.”

“Maybe he’s studying,” I said, not wanting to wrong him. We needed open and honest communication.

“Check through the computer when he goes to school.”

This was indeed a responsibility of a father. Sex education is essential. He needs to understand what sex means and how to approach it. So the next afternoon, I returned early and opened his computer while he was at school… I knew exactly what I would find. He needed something to provide sexual fantasies, which was normal. As long as it wasn’t too frequent to affect his growth and learning, it would be fine. I restored his browsing history, not as an invasion of privacy, but because he needed proper guidance, and that was all.

However, I didn’t find any pornographic material… no novels, no images, no videos—nothing.

Had he cleaned it up? No, browsing history couldn’t be completely erased. I had ways to recover it, but… there really was nothing, except… a lot of films and images about primates. That’s right, primates—specifically, mostly orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. A majority of these were educational films and documentaries that described their behaviours and recorded their lives. Sasha was just too sensitive. He clearly hadn’t lost himself in the sexual urges of adolescence but instead spent a lot of time pursuing his original interests—he had loved animals since childhood, from all kinds of insects to ferocious beasts and small creatures, and his favourite place to visit was the zoo. Many renowned zoologists in history had taken similar approaches. For example, Sir Jane Goodall, a well-known chimpanzee researcher who dedicated her life to promoting environmental protection and humanitarian initiatives. I hoped he could pursue such a great cause just like Jane did.

“We worried too much,” I said.

“Have you checked his computer? How much porn is on it?”

“None.”

“None?”

“He’s been watching documentaries and educational films about chimpanzees before bed; he’s found a career he loves.”

She pouted slightly.

“Let it go. We’ll deal with it if he goes off track.”

On his fifteenth birthday, I gave him a book titled My Life with the Chimpanzees authored by Jane Goodall.

I thought he would be thrilled, but unexpectedly, he shot me a glare and asked, “Did you look at my computer?”

I was instantly at a loss for words and looked at Sasha. I hoped she would at least do something to rescue me from this awkward situation, but she merely lowered her head, even though it was clearly her idea.

“Your mom is a bit worried about you, so…”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, frowning.

“Your mom and I are concerned that you’re not taking your studies seriously,” I shook my head, apologising by spinning a little lie. I had thought he would go back to his room, lock the door, and sulk like other boys his age. But to my surprise, he didn’t. He was more understanding than most kids.

“Okay, no more rummaging through my computer. I need my privacy now that I’ve grown up,” he said, grabbing the gift I had given him. “Thank you, I really like the gift.”

His gentle forgiveness left me somewhat bewildered.

“Yeah, you’ve grown up. We promise not to do that again,” I said. After the little incident, we began to cut the cake and have dinner together, with everything feeling as wonderful as usual. Those were the days I could never return to.

After dinner, he approached me and said, “Dad, I’d like to request about four hours of free time every Saturday afternoon. I want to go to the zoo to observe the chimpanzees.”

“Of course, you can go for as long as you want,” I replied with a smile. “Are you going with a girl?”

“No,” he said, looking down. “I’ll go by myself.”

I agreed; there was no reason for me to say no.

Before that incident, he had been the perfect child to me: smart, kind, academically and athletically gifted. He had even grown taller, first surpassing his mother, then me.

It was just an ordinary Saturday when he went to the zoo to observe the chimpanzees, as he did every weekend. I didn’t think much of it at the time, except that he still hadn’t returned by dinner time. I thought he had lost track of time, but when it was seven o’clock, he was still absent. I began to get worried and considered calling him. But my phone rang first. It was an unknown number.

“This is the Hongshan Zoo…” The caller identified himself and then mentioned my child’s name, “Are you his father?”

“Yes,” I felt a hint of unease.

“Could you come to the zoo?” he asked. “Your son has done something inappropriate at our zoo, and we need you to come in.”

I had no idea what had happened. Had he climbed over the barriers? What could he possibly have done to warrant being detained? I truly couldn’t think of anything. I told Sasha that I had to attend to some matters and left, trying not to worry her. After all, what could possibly go wrong at the zoo?

He was sitting right there when I arrived. Upon noticing my arrival, he shot a glance, before quickly covering his face and then bending down, avoiding eye contact with me.

“Sir, could you please step this way,” a staff said. “There is a video recording… You know, there are many children in the zoo, and such behaviour has disrupted public order. We should have called the police.”

He said this as he turned on the video and zoomed in on a figure standing in a corner. It was him. He was pressed against the glass, looking at the chimpanzees inside the glass house. Then, the camera shifted and zoomed in on him, revealing his facial features.

What followed was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen in my life.

He slipped his hand into his pants and began moving it up and down. Throughout, he was fixated on the chimpanzees behind the glass, continuing this for several minutes. Then, a parent noticed him and shouted. Startled, he hurriedly pulled up his pants and tried to run away.

“Our security guards caught him, and this isn’t the first time,” the staff switched to another time frame and a different angle. He was still facing the chimpanzee, performing the same act. “There are other recordings as well. Would you like to see them, sir?”

“No…” I held my head, feeling dizzy. Is this really happening? The person masturbating in front of the chimpanzee was him? I looked up at the camera again. Yes, that was him. He went to the zoo every Saturday, not to study the chimpanzees, but to relieve his sexual urges. Then, those chimpanzee images he viewed in his room… My face flushed red with embarrassment, I wished I could find a hole to crawl into immediately! This was far more embarrassing than stealing or fighting. But there was nothing I could do. This was reality, and they had caught him.

“I’m sorry… this is the first time I hear about this. His mother and I are usually very busy…” I applied the most common excuse. “I apologise for any trouble this may have caused, but… please don’t call the police. He’s still a young boy. You have my assurance that this won’t happen again. And the fine won’t be an issue. I’m a senior researcher at the Academy of Sciences, so you can trust my words.” I pulled my ID and some cash from my wallet and shoved them into his hand.

He hesitated for a moment, sighed, and accepted it. “You people are always like this—busy with work and not paying enough attention to your child…” Then he added, “Take him home. He’s only fifteen. If the police get involved, it will leave him with a bad record. But, sir, you must understand, if it happens again.…”

“Thank you so much,” I nodded in response. That was the most embarrassing moment in my life.

When I got back to the office, he was still covering his face, too ashamed to meet my gaze. Without saying much, I simply lifted his arm and said, “Let’s go home.”

He sat in the back seat of the car, staring blankly out of the window. After a moment of silence, he said, “Can we not tell Mom?”

“No. She’s your mother; she needs to know about this.”

Another long silence.

“Are you… really into chimpanzees?” I asked as the car stopped at a red light. “This isn’t some truth-or-dare game. No one paid you to do that. It’s just you— yearning for chimpanzees?”

“I, I…” He paused, then said, “Yes.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Do you like women?”

“Maybe… I don’t know.” From the rearview mirror, I could see that he had buried his head even deeper.

I took a deep breath, realising the seriousness of the situation. My child has developed a sexual attraction to primates, and it had been going on for some time. What’s worse, we were unaware of this and had even gifted him a book filled with images of chimpanzees.

“It’s okay. This… this is normal. People can fall ill—not just physically, but mentally too. We just need to seek treatment and intervention, and we can fix this,” I reassured him.

“Can I still go to school?”

“I don’t know. It depends. Don’t worry about school; health is the most important thing.”

Once home, I sat down with Sasha and explained the situation. After that, I immediately removed all chimpanzee-related items from his room, including the book My Life with the Chimpanzees. I picked up that book, packed it along with everything else into a box, and carried it all away. Although I wasn’t a psychologist, I knew that the first step in treatment was isolation.

“I’ve set a password on your computer. You can only use it when your mother and I are present, and when you’re on the computer, the door must be open.” I laid down the rules. Clearly, he had no grounds left to argue about his right to privacy, and he probably knew how embarrassing this was.

That evening, I called Shen Zeran, an old classmate of mine who had become a chief psychiatrist.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “This occasionally happens to teenagers. Based on my experience, the recovery rate is promising.” He went on to describe the causes of this phenomenon, including social environmental factors and a lack of interaction with the opposite gender. After listening to his explanation, I finally felt a bit more at ease. Zoophilia was just a psychological disorder that could be cured. There was nothing to worry about; everything would be fine.

After Fang Hong left, I enjoyed a stretch of time free from interruptions. They didn’t approach me again, nor did they urge me to confess anything. Had they given up? Maybe. The Pacific is simply too vast for human technology to conduct a thorough search, even within the 200 to 1,000-metre mid-water zone. I had warned it to never surface, as anything above the ocean is within human sight, given that satellites orbiting the Earth can constantly transmit high-definition images of the ocean’s surface. I just hope it listens to me, so that in a decade or two, humanity might forget about this incident and focus on other critical matters. But then what? What would happen after that? With a lifespan of five hundred years, will the dragon have to navigate the ocean in solitude for half a millennium? Could it endure such loneliness? Arriving in this world millions of years too soon, it opened its eyes to a panorama of otherness. In the depths of the ocean, there was no one who could understand its voice or share in its feelings.

What would such a long life mean for a dragon?

I could never know the answer. I’m just a human with a lifespan of only 80 years. As the ancient saying goes, the morning mushroom knows nothing of twilight, and the cicada is unaware of the changing seasons. Similarly, the pain in my body constantly reminds me that my life is nearing its end. What happens to the dragon and humans afterwards is no longer my concern.

Until one day, Lu Chen came to visit me.

He looked anxious, scanning the room carefully before leading me to the stairwell and whispering, “They might have a solution.”

“What? Are they really going to search the whole Pacific? That’s impossible.”

“No, but a little bird told me…” His voice lowered to a near whisper. “A clue has been found.”

I caught my breath, realising that it might not follow my advice.

“Two weeks ago, a lighthouse in the Pacific Islands received a radio signal from a ship. But the signal wasn’t about any course or position; instead, it was merely casual conversation, like that between people. They’ve discussed economics, politics, and even family. At first, the staff at the lighthouse thought the ship’s communicator might just be bored, but after investigation, they found that its characteristic encoding actually belonged to a sunken ship from a hundred years ago!”

“This is bad.”

“That ship… They checked historical records and found it was a vessel that perished during the Pacific War, located deep in the Pacific.”

“Are the radio facilities of a WWII ship still functional? Radio signals can’t transmit underwater.”

“Ship communication equipment are very robust, it’s not difficult to create an antenna that extends above the water’s surface. You know… it can generate power on its own.”

“The submarines are already on their way, isn’t it? Following the electromagnetic signals isn’t a challenge.” I tapped my cane against the wall, realising why Fang Hong hadn’t come back to find me.

Lu Chen nodded.

I should have seen this coming.

Any intelligent life cannot endure prolonged solitude. The freedom a dragon needs transcends that of whales and tigers, which only necessitate the ocean and the forest. Dragons, much like us, possess intelligence, which brings the need for communication and intimacy. The vast Pacific would merely be a larger cage for it if it has no friends to communicate with —consider Robinson Crusoe, who could survive on a deserted island, but what he needed was not just water and food, but rather companionship. Any advanced animal in nature requires companions. And for it, companions can only be humans, the only other being of equal intelligence. It is curious about everything related to humans and desires to communicate with any human being. Perhaps with this mindset, it found an ancient lost ship, repaired it and activated its communication equipment.

I took a deep breath.

Could they catch it? After all, it’s in the Pacific! But human technology is already undeniably powerful—thermal tracking, sonar, torpedoes… They collected its data, and would hence naturally have experience dealing with it. Maybe it could escape? But what if it retaliated? What if it unleashed lightning in the ocean? It would undoubtedly cause fatal damage to the submarines. If it destroyed a submarine… I couldn’t imagine such a scenario. When that happens, the ones coming to question me wouldn’t be as nice as Fang Hong.”

“How long have the submarines been gone?”

“Three hours.”

“They haven’t reached their destination yet…”

“The lighthouse communication is still ongoing, and the submarines will be there soon—two days at most.”

I leaned against the wall, lost in silence. I should have anticipated this. What good would it have done to let it go? The wisdom that humanity has accumulated over millions of years had been rivalled by no natural beings. Although it was deep in the Pacific, that area was still human territory.

“We—we need to think of a way,” Lu Chen grasped my arm.

“What can I do? We are not in a position to make decisions.”

“At least…” Lu Chen’s eyelids drooped. “It might listen to you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He glanced out the window, took a deep breath, as if making a significant decision. “It’s time for you to reconsider your position.”

“What do you mean?” I glared at him.

“Each submarine carries 130 soldiers on board, each of them would be someone’s father, son, and husband. Do you know how dangerous that is?” Lu Chen raised his voice. “It moves swiftly and can unleash devastating lightning. It might breach the surface and even sink those submarines and ships. And guess what? Will humanity simply accept defeat? No! They will only intensify their efforts to capture it. You are aware of the consequences: many lives will be lost, vast amounts of time and money will be wasted, yet the outcome will remain unchanged. It’s time to wake up. We need to admit our mistakes!”

“You… Lu Chen, you know how they will treat it.”

“Catch it, and return it to the lab. But it can still live, can’t it? Trust me, we still have a chance. They believe it still has some scientific value. But if it really destroys a submarine, It’ll be a whole different story,” Lu Chen tightened his hold on my arm once again.

I pried his hand off my arm and pushed the stairwell door open. I had nothing more to say to him.

“Wake up! It’s a dragon, a fusion! It is not your son! Think about the submarine soldiers. They are our compatriots,” Lu Chen shouted.

I left Lu Chen behind and lay back down on the bed. I couldn’t stand for long, even the slightest weight on that organ caused intense pain. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my mind, but Lu Chen’s words haunted me.

“We need to admit our mistakes.”

Was it really a mistake?

Had I made a mistake again, just like before? Should I try to correct it? Do I still have a chance?

I don’t know. Maybe that was why I always made mistakes.

Treatment for zoophilia started shortly after, and while searching for more information, Sasha and I no longer felt it was an embarrassing matter—instead, it was just a psychological disorder, a form of sexual deviation. The public might hold prejudice against such distorted symptoms, but we didn’t. It was our son who unfortunately suffered from such a disease, nothing more.

“According to the results of the psychological tests, the situation is… complex,” Doctor Shen said.

“Is it severe?” I asked.

“Hard to say…” His brows furrowed for a moment but quickly relaxed. “But you can rest assured. Clinically, zoophilia is purely a psychological issue caused by environmental factors, and corrective approaches are quite effective. Unlike homosexuality, people aren’t instinctively attracted to animals. If it were instinctual, the treatment would be ineffective and can even lead to significant side effects. But zoophilia isn’t innate; humans cannot be natural zoophiles,” he emphasised.

“Can he still go to school?”

“He should be in school, making contact with peers of the opposite gender as much as possible. Oh, and I have a few questions for you: is he popular at school? Has he faced rejection before?

He asked many similar questions, and we answered them as best as we could. After the consultation, he prescribed some medication and instructed him to take it every night on time, as well as to avoid any contact with anything related to chimpanzees. He should complete one course of treatment before being further observed.

“Is there anything you’ve chosen not to tell me?” I asked Shen Zeran in private.

“As I said, the situation is complex,” he replied. “The usual triggers for zoophilia don’t seem to be present. He is neither constantly surrounded by animals nor does he anthropomorphise them, nor has he experienced severe rejection from the opposite gender. Generally, zoophiles imagine their objects of desire as intelligent and beautiful beings, often linked to delusional disorders. But he doesn’t. In our conversations, he seemed to only experience sexual desire for chimpanzees. He doesn’t envision them as anything else, nor does he care whether they have intelligence; it’s merely… pure desire.”

I didn’t fully grasp the weight of his words at that moment. After all, research on zoophilia was already well-established, and psychologists had long drawn conclusions that they could cure such a disease. All we needed to do was wait patiently. I trusted in the achievements of medicine, the result of accumulated past experience. With isolation and medication, I believed he would be just fine.

With the diagnosis being sorted out and his return to school, I felt less anxious, which allowed me to devote more time to work.

Our research on the ultimate virus continued, albeit slowly.

Lu Chen spent almost every day in the lab, observing the mice infected with the virus. He didn’t notice any abnormalities in the mice, which ate and slept as usual, appearing even happier than before. This result was not surprising to me. The ultimate virus had already spread to every corner of the Earth before we could even understand it. If it could cause even the mildest illness, the structure of human society and the natural world would be dramatically altered. But the reality was that our ordinary and happy lives continued. Apart from us biologists, people hardly showed any interest in this virus.

“There’s no toxicity or effects whatsoever,” he said. “What is this virus made of, plain water?”

“Maybe it’s like water—producing no effects at all,” I replied.

“There’s another possibility: it might have effects, but the sample size of the mice is too small for us to observe. The virus exhibits varying effects in different individuals. Some, like one-third of hepatitis B patients, can live symptom-free for life, while others may suffer from cirrhosis. Somewhere in the world, these viruses might have taken effect,” Lu Chen still believed in his theory. It was impossible for a virus to have no effect on organisms, as that would contradict past observations.

But in any case, we had no leads. Besides, the funding allocated to the lab remained stable—not too much, not too little. As for the insect hybridisation issue, it gradually faded from my mind. After all, entomology and virology were totally different. Besides, other concerns in life kept me preoccupied.

After three months of treatment, we felt so relieved as observations indicated that his conditions had significantly improved.

“The medication is working, and isolation went well. Remember to encourage him to have more interaction with girls in school,” Shen Zeran advised. “After this period, the dosage of the medication can be decreased, and the oversight can be eased.”

Hearing Shen Zeran’s words, we finally breathed easy. Illnesses come and go. Zoophilia wasn’t a death sentence, and there were good solutions in medicine. So, we relaxed our vigilance over him. Following Shen’s suggestion, we stopped the medication. His school life continued, and everything seemed to be heading in the right direction.

Sasha and I even began to forget about it; our lives returned to normal.

But we were wrong.

When I received a call from the police station in my office, I thought it was a scam until they provided more accurate information. That’s when I realised that damned incident happened again. The caller spoke vaguely on the phone, simply telling me to come in.

“The red-haired orangutan is a protected species…technically, this cannot be classified as illegal hunting or killing, as no substantial injuries were found in the veterinarian check, but…”

“I’ve seen him. He often comes to take photos with the orangutans. I thought he just liked them, but I never expected to see something like that. In the evening, I was counting the orangutans as usual when I noticed his hand on one of them…”

These words echoed thunderously in my mind as I sat there, nodding helplessly. What could I say? Any defence would be meaningless. I didn’t even have the heart to look at him. After all, he looked just the same, sitting there with his head buried. It has become clear to me—his longing for apes wasn’t a mere fascination but something far more severe. Like a wild beast, he couldn’t suppress his desires. But even a normal man, no matter how much he loves women, would not behave this way in public. His conditions showed no signs of improvement. After they were done speaking, I took out all the medical records and test documents that I had prepared before coming. I told them he had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder a year ago, and it had merely recurred. ‘Psychological disorders’ sounded better than ‘sexual perversion,’ and it gave me a reason to smoothly take him away. The woods aren’t exactly a public place, so he didn’t break any laws. I quickly reached an agreement with the forest ranger and settled the matter with money.

After the latest incident, the long course of further treatment began anew. I needed to set aside time to accompany him to Shen Zeran for follow-ups every fortnight. Shen prescribed medication and instructed us to continue the isolation—a draining ordeal, as we had to monitor his phone, computer, and even the books he bought. As he grew older, we found it increasingly hard to keep it up, as the Man and Nature series could be found at any newsstand. I had to consider interrupting his education and have him hospitalised for treatment.

“I don’t understand, why?” I asked him.

“I’m sorry.” He kept his head down.

“Can’t you hold it in? You just can’t control yourself, can you?”

He seemed to be cured once more, but with the discontinuation of medication, he inevitably returned to his old habits. The allure of primates for him was no less than that of heroin, making it nearly impossible for him to break free. The pattern repeated itself several times until I gradually became desensitised to the initial shock and embarrassment. I could honestly tell others that my child had a psychological disorder and he didn’t mean to “harm” those chimpanzees.

After several attempts, weariness overtook us as the medicine’s control had proved to be futile.

“This is odd, about the aversion therapy we’ve discussed…” Shen Zeran said. “Yang, although this contradicts my medical understanding, his symptoms remind me of homosexuality…”

It only dawned on me later that Shen, with his sharp medical intuition, had already pointed this out to me.

He once said that “for a long time in history, doctors have tried to treat homosexuality with medications, aversion techniques, electroshock, and even surgeries. The results were consistent: although these treatments could indeed reduce their same-sex attraction and stimulate the desire for the opposite sex during treatment, their original feelings resurfaced once the treatment ended. Homosexuality is an instinct that cannot be cured or forcibly changed. All actions taken to treat homosexuality have caused severe psychological harm to the patients… Alan Turing did not die from a cyanide-laced apple but from chemical treatment targeting homosexuality.”

“Zoophilia is not an instinct, is it?” I didn’t like what Shen Zeran said. It sounded like he was implying my child was a natural zoophile. But when he mentioned Alan Turing, I felt a twinge of fear.

“It shouldn’t be… no.”

“What do you think? Can aversion therapy cure him?” I hoped he could offer me an answer instead of a choice.

“Yang, I’m… not sure, but you can simply think of it as a disability. No matter what, he is still your child.”

Shen Zeran had warned us, but he could not be certain. Based on past medical experiences, zoophilia is developed later in life and is therefore curable, but his behaviour did resemble that of homosexuality. Theoretically, aversion therapy is effective. He was still inclined towards aversion therapy when I asked about his final stance—if a method had been effective in the past, there was no reason not to continue its application.

But I was filled with uncertainty. Should we just accept this as a disability, as he suggested before? Maybe I could accept going to the police station every day to hear that my son had once again molested an animal. But what about my son? Could he accept it? He possessed many admirable qualities, but that label—sexual pervert—would overshadow all his virtues, turning him into a repulsive fellow.

But Shen’s words still echoed in my mind.

Alan Turing did not die from cyanide, but from incorrect treatment.

Sasha and I discussed about the aversion therapy for a long time.

Should we give it a try, or should we simply accept him as he was, although his life would forever be shadowed by this strange desire? But his fetish could be seen as a disability, and many people are living with disabilities in this world.

“Let’s give it a try. It’s better than doing nothing…” she said. “We can stop if things go wrong.”

I didn’t oppose it; I still held a glimmer of hope, too.

Making the decision caused us great pain, yet upon reflection, I began to question whether our pain was truly that great.

What about him—how much pain was he truly enduring?”

Not only did he struggle with an uncontrollable sexual drive, he also had to face the pressures from both his parents and society. Unfortunately, I was too obtuse to notice all the signs, including his increasing silence and introversion, as well as his fading smile and expression.

“Do you want to…continue the treatment?” I asked him cautiously.

“What did the doctor say?”

“He thought we should give it a try.”

“Okay, I’ll cooperate as much as I can,” he nodded, trying to appear resolute. Whenever I recalled that moment, my heart sank like it was falling into a frozen abyss. Would everything have turned out differently if I had hugged him at that moment?

“The electrodes will be placed on the back of the neck and the top of the head to stimulate him starting with the slightest twinge of pain. The purpose of this is to condition an aversion to animalistic desires until the hormone levels in the brain transform when animals appear before his sight,” Shen explained while positioning them on my son.

He forced a smile at me, even as he was about to undergo electroshock.

I still remember that smile clearly.

We watched him through the glass window, only to meet his gaze. He had grown quite tall, towering over both of us, a stark contrast to how he was in his childhood. He was only the size of a kitten when he was born, and suddenly he had become a big boy. His eyes were red, perhaps from the lack of quality sleep, or from the pain. He twisted his lips into a smile, probably to keep us from worrying.

“How do you feel?” I asked him after the treatment.

He merely nodded, with his eyes looking more vacant and duller than ever. I assumed it was just a side effect of the treatment, and thought everything would be okay as long as he got through it.

Shen Zeran sought me out again by the seventeenth week of the therapy.

“The conservative treatment has concluded, and the hormone levels have decreased,” Shen said.

I hesitated at the doctor’s advice. On the one hand, I had clearly observed his mental state, yet on the other hand, the lure of a complete cure was hard to ignore. Part of me wondered if it was time to stop—he was clearly in great pain. Yet another part of me imagined a future where he overcame zoophilia, led a normal life and experienced love like anyone else. How much of life’s meaning would he lose, if he were incapable of loving and desiring another human?

Sasha and I vacillated between these two choices as time slowly slipped away, during which he endured even deeper pain. This was the essence of aversion therapy: using pain to counteract the original desire. Whenever he felt desire for chimpanzees, pain was artificially induced into his body, making it clear that such desires led to suffering. Generally, this method is effective for acquired sexual deviations—any preference developed later in life can be treated by similar means. This was also why this method cannot treat homosexuality, as homosexual desires stem from instinct.

“I don’t want to continue anymore,” he said to me one evening, his eyes red from tearing.

I remained silent, not knowing how to answer. I knew it was time to accept this fact. It’s alright. He’s still our child, and we will always love him.

“I’ll discuss it with your mother,” I replied.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I dreamed about a chimpanzee again last night,” he said. “I dreamed that I was making… I’m still very sick, aren’t I?”

“Don’t overthink it; you’ll get better soon,” I said. Only long afterwards did I realise that he must have taken my words the wrong way. I meant to encourage him, not push him towards more treatment. He misread me.

“I know,” he nodded and walked off, but then he stopped, turned around, and said:

“I love you, Dad. I love Mom too. I’m so lucky to have both of you.”

It was the first time he’s ever mentioned love in all our years together.

“Just go back to sleep and stop overthinking it.”

These were the last words I ever said to him.

At midnight, I was awoken by a loud bang. Being a light sleeper, I found myself sweating as I got up and tried to find out what had happened. I knocked on his bedroom door, but there was no response. A wave of fear crept in as I searched the house for him. He wasn’t in the bathroom or the kitchen, and my mind raced with the worst possibilities. Trembling, I leaned over the windowsill and looked down. There he was, lying still.

The following moments were blanked out to me. I might have lost that entire memory. No matter how hard I tried, I could only recall some trivial details. For instance, there was a scene where a nurse handed me a form. I glanced at it and noticed many names with the same date. In the last column, “DECEASED” was scrawled in various styles. I spent a long time figuring out that I needed to sign it, but I couldn’t recall how to write my name. In the end, I could only vaguely draw something that resembled the characters and handed it back to the nurse. She didn’t care how illegible my handwriting was as long as I signed it. This was the procedure: the confirmation of a person’s death was usually done by their closest relative. I was the only one who could sign; Sasha was too broken to bear any more.

Another scene was one evening, a long time after he left. Sasha was reading before bed as usual, and when it was time, we turned off the lights and lay down to sleep. Then, in the quiet darkness, she suddenly said:

“You know, longevity is a blessing for most people, but a torment for me.”

“Are you okay?” I sprang up, overwhelmed with dread.

“Don’t be so nervous; I won’t leave you. It’s just an expression,” she said calmly in the dim light. Then she turned away, closed her eyes, and remained silent for the rest of the night.

That was the end of him.

Everything has a beginning and an end, and I bore witness to his. He streaked through my life like a comet. I cheered for his arrival and mourned his departure. I’ve tried to seek him out, but that comet had long since faded away, racing into the depths of the universe.

“Is that creature, the dragon, really like him?” Sasha asked me.

I nodded, as there was no need to deny it. “I know him better than anyone—their gestures, expressions, and verbal styles are very similar. I know how absurd it sounds; how could a dragon possibly resemble a human? Yet that’s just the case. Both he and it are shy and gentle. He liked playing with his fingers while talking, and so does it… ah, but not fingers, claws. Either way, it carries part of him as it has inherited his genes.” I rambled on, recounting many other details of their similarities, such as his preferences and facial features. The hybrid dragon had inherited more than just genes from him. It was likely that it had recognised me from the moment it was born. That gaze…it lingered in my memory like an etched engraving.

“Its genes are from him.”

“But it’s not our child; it just resembles him,” she replied. “Perhaps you should make the right decision.”

Sasha’s words completely shattered me. I knew perfectly well what she meant by saying ‘the right decision.’

“Why did you let it go?” she asked again.

“I taught it many things, explaining that the Earth is vast, and one day it would be home to dragons, describing that the Pacific Ocean is immense, far beyond the confines of this small lab, and showing it those documentaries about the magnificent deep ocean. It asked me if it could go have a look there, since it was a born swimmer.”

“But that’s not the ultimate reason.”

“You’re right,” I said, resting my head against the pillow. “It asked me when the research on it would stop. The electric stimulation experiments left it completely drained.”

Inside the laboratory’s blast-proof windows, there were water, stones, and even trees—a considerable area. But it was absolutely insufficient for a dragon, who belonged to the skies and oceans. After discovering it could generate electricity and had great energy transmission efficiency, they decided to pursue more practical applications, testing whether it could be involved in industrial production, weather adjustment or national defence. We insignificant humans maintained our arrogance even when standing before such a legendary being, the pinnacle of the evolutionary tree, and treated it as we treated other creatures: a tool, expecting it to serve humanity.

But it was not a tool—it was a dragon.

It expressed its humble wishes through the thick glass.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” it said.

It was as if yesterday had returned.

He smiled at me through the thick glass, humbly asking if he could stop the treatment.

I had refused once, and I could not refuse again.

The same mistake cannot be made twice.

I returned to the laboratory that night after all the researchers had left, turned off the recording devices, and showed it the weaknesses of the lab’s electrical system and the method of opening the laboratory’s skylight using electrical discharges.

“Why are you doing this?” it asked me.

“Because we shouldn’t be doing that.”

“But who are you?” It leaned down, fixing me with its sharp gaze. “Did you just create me? Is there… some more connection between us?”

It was intelligent, just like him.

Some more connection… there certainly was, but I didn’t tell it.

“Bye,” it said, then leaped up, pressing its forehead against the metallic seam of the roof’s explosion-proof door. The alarm immediately blared when the lab’s electrical control system failed. It tore through the thick metal door with its strong claws, compressing its long, flexible body to squeeze out. Outside, the rain was pouring heavily, with spring thunder rumbling. It ascended into the clouds, vanishing from my sight.

We are always making mistakes. The lucky ones die before realising their errors, while the unfortunate struggle with them, unable to move forward or backward.

During the treatment for his zoophilia, I found the ultimate virus to only resemble chaos theory, offering nearly no clues. Ironically, just after his passing, we made a breakthrough.

The ultimate virus functions as a solvent.

Yes, a solvent — that’s the conclusion we reached. There is no better term to describe it. Some chemical substances that are unable to combine by themselves can merge when dissolved in water, and the ultimate virus operates in the same manner. Of course, it was not the lab rats, which remained asymptomatic as before, that led us to this conclusion. It was because I received an email from Steve Simon once again.

The email stated that their hybridisation research on insects had made progress. They discovered that those insects capable of breaking reproductive isolation exhibited extremely slight mutations, which were not triggered by extreme environmental conditions. They spent decades ruling out factors that could cause mutations and ultimately found a commonality among those insects—they all contain the ultimate virus. Thus, Simon reached out to the team that had studied the ultimate virus the earliest and most extensively—us.

And so, we finally realised that there was a connection between many strange phenomena.

The evolutionary revolution of insects is related to the ultimate virus.

What about other organisms? This was a natural association. Genetic fusion in plants was already a known technology, it only worked more smoothly now. The question was whether animals, especially more complex vertebrates, could achieve such fusion. They sent us a group of Sikkim rats, close relatives of the house mice we kept as lab rats. We implanted the ultimate virus into both species, bred them together and observed whether they could produce fertile offspring.

Lu Chen was excited about it, but I was not. I felt an underlying sense of dread.

“Zoophilia is not an instinct.”

“Actions that attempt to treat instincts can lead to severe consequences.”

The conversations from before echoed in my mind. I couldn’t help but recall his fascination with chimpanzees—humans and chimpanzees are also close relatives, aren’t they? If that really was an instinct…

The first batch of house mice and Sikkim rats did not fuse, but they also did not fight. Perhaps it was because there was plenty of food and living space. We waited patiently, as rodents possess strong reproductive capacities and can produce new offspring in a short time. Additionally, we had the technology to regulate the environment and hormones to accelerate the iteration speed of offspring. The second generation of offspring remained the same. It seemed that reproductive isolation still loomed like an insurmountable mountain for mammals.

But when it reached the seventh generation, a miracle occurred.

The Sikkim rat numbered E182 was a female. With the aid of accelerated maturation technology, it produced several litters in just a few months. Finally, the mouse numbered F993 caught our attention. Its genotype was not typical of either a house mouse or a Sikkim rat, but rather a perfect balance between the two—it was half house mouse and half Sikkim rat.

“Is it fertile?” Lu Chen asked excitedly, staring at the little creature.

We activated the breeding acceleration device, and F993 matured faster. Other house mice were put in to mate with it. Before long, we discovered it was pregnant and gave birth to healthy offspring. Later, we brought in more distantly related servant mice. The progeny of the half-house mouse and half-Sikkim rat showed a greater inclination to mate with servant mice rather than with the lab or Sikkim mice.

Indeed, it showed a preference for mating with species that were not of the same kind, which was entirely against common sense.

It was more like an instinctual sexual preference.

No matter how much it contradicted previous biological theories, the undeniable fact stood before us. The solvent effect of the ultimate virus was equally effective for mammals. At that time, we published many papers explaining and predicting how the ultimate virus dissolves reproductive isolation. But my thoughts were elsewhere. I just wanted to know—what about humans? Was it the same for us?

How could I confirm it?

Was my child’s zoophilia also related to the ultimate virus?

Was it truly an instinct?

If my hypothesis turns out to be correct that humans and chimpanzees are just like those mice, then what they said earlier would indeed be right. Lu Chen once theorised that the virus’s effects might vary widely depending on the individual, though its broader implications remained unclear. The idea that I could have ended the treatment haunted me over and over again. I kept returning to the memories, mulling over past details that robbed me of sleep.

I had to check the truth.

“Do we have his DNA? His… toothbrush, do we still have it?” I asked Sasha one night.

“Yes, we do. Remember? We kept his baby hair in a cloth pouch when he was born.”

How could this slip my mind? His baby hair contained DNA data! I ran to the cupboard on the balcony, digging through a pile of clutter until I found the dust-covered cloth pouch. It was small and adorned with an embroidered flower. I tore it open, took out the hair, put it in a plastic bag, and rushed to the laboratory.

Was his zoophilia instinctual? Was he one of the world’s first natural zoophiles?

Doubts piled up in my heart, fermenting along with my regrets and remorse. I reached the machine, inputting the umbilical hair for sequencing and comparing it with the DNA mutation nodes left by the end virus in mammals. Soon, the program began running, the fan in the computer emitting a hissing sound. I sat there waiting, utterly fatigued yet strangely alert. I stared at the progress bar on the computer, counting each passing moment. Before long, sunlight streamed through the laboratory windows as night dissolved into day.

At 7:20 a.m. when the results were ready, Lu Chen walked into the lab.

The computer showed the results.

“You stayed here all night?” Lu Chen asked me.

I didn’t answer. He walked over and saw the set of numbers.

“What’s this comparison result? It shows a high degree of compatibility. Have you made any new discoveries?”

“This is… my child.”

After a moment of silence, I said, “Lu Chen, humans are not special. We are merely a part of this evolutionary revolution. In the long years to come, we will, like mice, develop sexual desires for closely related species.”

Back at that time, Lu was oblivious to my son’s situation, only knowing that he was ill and then dead. Sensing my underlying message, he sat beside me as a listener, and I revealed everything to him.

Changes in nature appear to be slow for humans as evolution spans across millions of years, while human civilisation has developed in only a few millennia. Perhaps we can use technology to catch a glimpse of the trends of evolution, but in the face of the vast passage of time, our lives are far too short. A tiny fraction of all species has begun to break through reproductive isolation, and it is foreseeable that this scale will increase over time. But most of the time, most people’s sexual desires are still directed toward other humans.

“You were right. That treatment suppresses instincts,” I said, handing the results to Shen Zeran.

“This is terrible,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping them. “It’s not just about your son…”

“What do you mean?”

“There have been reports of a small number of young zoophiles everywhere, and the numbers are still rising,” he stated.

“Are they still using aversion therapy?”

Shen nodded.

“Then tell them that instincts cannot be erased.”

After a brief silence, he said, “I will give it a try, but this data is insufficient. I need more reliable academic evidence. If you can’t provide a solid answer, I can’t convince my colleagues that past experiences are no longer applicable.”

I got his point–all the evidence I had was a DNA comparison.

More children around the world were undergoing ‘treatment.’ Yet, natural processes unfold far too slowly for human society to respond effectively. The vast majority of humans do not experience sexual attraction to closely related species. Thus, the situation for natural zoophiles was predictable. Even if they were not subjected to electric shock therapy, they would still be marginalised from society. Only in the very distant future, when the number of these individuals is no longer considered a ‘tiny fraction,’ might the structure of human society genuinely change.

The fates of many others would mirror that of my son.

My research found an additional motivation.

In the fourth year after realising the solvent action of the ultimate virus, we had witnessed fertile hybrid individuals between chimpanzees and orangutans in the laboratory, which combined the physical characteristics of both species and were in good health. It was a fusion of two types of great apes, a brand-new species. Or rather, chimpanzees and orangutans merged into one single species. Biologically speaking, if there is no reproductive isolation, it means they are part of the same species, like different dogs.

“One plus one equals one; what was originally two has become one.”

I gazed at the enormous evolutionary tree on the computer, one I had seen countless times before. This magnificent tree structure interconnected all living organisms in nature from viruses to humans. At the roots of the tree is the common ancestor of all life, the oldest prokaryote on Earth. The leaves represent the highly differentiated species—those that can fly, swim, and build civilisations. According to past theories, species would continue to diverge greatly. However, since the advent of human’s industrial civilisation, the number of species began to decline sharply. We believed this was a consequence of humanity, but was that truly the case? Could humans, given our limited capacity, cause a reduction in species almost equivalent to the Mass Extinction? Or was the evolutionary tree itself transitioning from spring to autumn? For some purpose, the weak leaves on the tree would turn yellow and fall?

But what about the robust and resilient leaves?

They fused into one.

Orangutans and chimpanzees could hybridise and their hybrid offspring could mate with more distantly related species, meaning that chimpanzees could also merge with monkeys, maybe even humans. Beyond that, could all the ape species merge together, just like those match-3 game? Species that separated millions of years ago would continue to merge over millions more years…

I gazed at the evolutionary tree, imagining these branches merging together, then merging again, continuously merging.”

The evolutionary tree will have an endpoint.

“Dad, isn’t everything supposed to have a beginning and an end? The evolutionary tree has a beginning, which is a prokaryote, but what is its end?”

“Humans are the end.”

“Humans are not the end, but just an ordinary leaf on the evolutionary tree.”

Yes, humans are just an ordinary leaf.

The endpoint is the destination of the evolutionary tree–the fusion of all lives. All lives on our Earth are born to nurture this endpoint. In the past, the evolutionary tree branched out. And now, it is entering a phase of convergence. Just as its divergence took billions of years, its convergence will also last for billions of years. An ancient Chinese philosophical saying goes that “there was a great cedar in ancient times, which saw eight thousand years as spring and eight thousand years as autumn.” It is not a real tree, but an abstract one representing all lives on Earth. Its chaotic complexity is merely a process. It will have an endpoint and ultimately be as simple and beautiful as a mathematical formula. The vast and diverse array of species is an inevitable path toward the endpoint.

“The evolutionary tree is converging, and it has an endpoint,” I shared this thought with Lu Chen.

“Can we prove it?”

We must take action now. For me, this was not just about science.

I spent the latter half of my life in prolonged experiments.

We collected different species, accelerated the sexual maturity of the offspring and selected individuals that exhibited sexual attraction to closely related species, allowing them to produce offspring, which then mated with more distantly related species. In summary, it was all about convergence—merging each branch of the evolutionary tree into one, and then further fusing them together… We artificially accelerated this process. Even so, the time consumed by the experiments was lengthy, given that it would take hundreds of millions of years in a natural environment.

When the experiments began, I doubted I would live to see the emergence of the ultimate species. However, when the experiments reached their thirteenth year, which was when I reached fifty-five, our methods for accelerating maturation improved–we mimicked the solvent action of the ultimate virus, allowing us to combine reproductive cells without the need for the animals to mate. We extracted the somatic cells from the offspring, performed reverse induction to initiate meiosis, then used the ultimate virus to produce the next generation more rapidly.

When I was sixty-one, we created a snake covered in fish scales, which could close up when entering water and slither with a rustling sound like a snake when out of the water. With its larger body and greater strength, it moved with remarkable speed and was capable of unleashing deadly venom. This new species, a hybrid of all snakes and fishes, was named by us as a fish-snake. It had a slender body with fish-like gills, and its venom glands were located in the upper abdomen, resembling some fish’s swim bladders. The snake’s genes were so dominant that it retained most of the snake-like traits, making it appear more snake-like. Moreover, the fish-snake inherited the abilities of the electric eel—it could even emit bioelectricity, and the power it generated was much stronger than that of the electric eel.

While reptiles merged quickly, experimentation with mammals slowed significantly —mammalian cells were far more difficult to conduct reverse induction. It took us over a year to merge the fish-snake with the most primitive mammals, which was the peak achievement of our accelerated maturation technology. During its merger with the platypus, the fish-snake developed a long and sharp snout resembling a pelican’s bill.

“What’s your opinion?” Lu Chen asked, pointing at the specimen.

“The genes of the snake are incredibly strong. And it seems to be slowly evolving towards… that ancient totem.”

“The dragon,” he said, “the Chinese dragon, that mythical creature.”

“Did our ancestors foresee all of this?”

“It may be inevitable. People have always imagined the fusion of different creatures, like griffins, the combination of lions and eagles. Dragons are the fusion of all life, so it has a higher chance of appearing in human imagination. Do you know how the image of dragons originated?”

“How?” I asked him.

“With the antlers like a deer, the head a camel, the eyes a rabbit, the neck a snake, the scales a fish, the claws an eagle, the ears an ox, dragons can ascend to the heaven and plunge into the sea and are capable of unleashing thunder. These are the inspirations behind the image of dragons. During the time of the Yellow Emperor, each tribe had its own totem, some representing mountains and rivers, while others represented birds and beasts. When one tribe conquered another, they chose to fuse their totems in order to expand their population. However, it was impossible for two totems to fully fuse, otherwise the resulting image would be too complex. So, only the main features of the totems were retained. As different tribes continually battled each other, the totems gradually evolved and ultimately fused features such as the body of a snake, antlers of a deer, scales of a fish, and the mouth of a crocodile to create the dragon.”

“The dragon was the final totem of cultural fusion. And now, it is the final form of biological evolution.”

“Who knows? We still have many species to integrate. Maybe it will end up not resembling a dragon,” Lu Chen said.

Time passed slowly, and both Lu Chen and I grew older. I recalled that I was sixty-three when I aged drastically. Before that, I felt like a middle-aged man, just like I had been in my forties and fifties, but after sixty-three, my body and spirit weakened significantly. It was then that I began to experience urinary symptoms. I had already stepped fully into my senior years before the end was anywhere in sight for the fusion of species.

Meanwhile, the newly created fused creature acquired the ability to fly. Its body remained slender, but bird-like claws that were agile and sharp grew along its sides, enabling it to leave marks on hard metal surfaces and perform delicate gripping actions. It soared around the experimental area, releasing electric energy, like deities from myths that command thunder and lightning. The dragon does not originate from the past but from the distant future. It is the ultimate result of biological fusion after billions of years.

The flight ability of the fused creature brought in both funding and attention. Investments in the experiment were substantial, but selection process was incredibly time-consuming, making the successful specimen exceedingly valuable. Yet they still believed that we humans must find ways to utilise it. The arrival of the higher-ups startled me. They listened to our explanations without saying a word, then granted us a large sum of funding. To me, this dragon-like hybrid embodied beauty, elegance and spirit, akin to Euler’s formula among living beings. But in their eyes, dragons were more like nuclear fusion reactors, potentially providing long-term benefits for human society. Their focus was always on human interests, as it should be–it was their responsibility.

The fused creature looked more and more like a dragon.

I had also collected sufficient evidence to prove that zoophilia was natural and would impact part of the human population.

The mistakes I made were irreparable, but future errors could still be avoided. I proposed the theory of the convergence of the evolutionary tree and had indeed created hybrid life forms. Actually, the ultimate life form was about to be created in the foreseeable future. And humans would have to face this evolutionary process.

However, things didn’t go as I had imagined.

“They accepted the theory, but…” Shen Zeran said with a solemn expression.

“But what?”

“The aversion therapy will continue,” he stated.

“That’s impossible! If they accepted the theory, then…”

“We were wrong, Yang. After they told me the decision, I realised the decision to continue the correction of zoophilia had nothing to do with the theory.”

“Why? I don’t understand. They clearly know it’s natural.”

“If the trend of the evolutionary tree is fusion and convergence, have you considered that humanity might resist this trend?” he asked me.

I was too stunned to utter a word.

“As the master of all things, humans are reproductively isolated from other animals not only physically but also psychologically. Otherwise, why would we consider zoophilia deviant? Our bloodline is considered noble because we are pure human, not hybrids of humans and chimpanzees. Of course, that’s just my own interpretation.” He sighed and shook his head. “I have a more pragmatic guess — perhaps the impact on human society of accepting zoophilia is far greater than the side effects of treating it. There are people committing suicide every day, but there are always new children born. Individually, we are insignificant, but on a larger scale, if… if a group of humans are no longer pure humans but hybrids, what significant changes will occur in the ethics and morals of human society?”

I took a deep breath, as I took in his point.

Indeed, if the convergence of the evolutionary tree is going to last for hundreds of millions of years, does it have any connection with human society whose history is only tens of thousands of years? The zoophile humans are so rare that humanity will likely be on Mars or even beyond the solar system by the time their population becomes significant. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to refuse the merging of human and other species, deny the existence of such a trend, and continue treating zoophilia? In the future, human society will remain as it is, just with a few more poor souls, who are of no difference from those dying from war and famine.

The future interests of the overall human race must be guaranteed even at the expense of the insignificant minority, despite our claims that all lives matter. In no way would humans reach their current position if they ignore the collective benefit. This is the law of nature, which humans, as a part of it, cannot escape from. “There are some things we cannot change,” Shen Zeran said.

I was no longer actively engaged in the study of the ultimate life form, but having led the team for so long, I could not leave it. My students, colleagues and superiors were all keen to continue the fusion experiments. I had to be there to ensure the research not stray too far from its intended path. I was still putting in the last efforts.

“Can we domesticate it?” a student asked me. The creature before us was getting more and more like a dragon, which excited him a lot with its potential values.

“I don’t know. We haven’t conducted that kind of research yet,” I replied honestly.

“Let’s give it a try. Funding will definitely be secured. If it possesses intelligence… though the process is slow… it may be mass-produced in the future.” He stroked his chin and said, “Although it may be hard to fly faster than a jet fighter, it is much more agile than robots, making it possible to perform tasks that humans find inconvenient. Oh, professor, we’ve sent you a testing form. We hope you can test its ability to adapt to extreme temperatures as well as high radiation environments.”

In the month I was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, the experiment on hybrid life reached its final stage.

Over ninety percent of genetic types from various species had already been integrated into the dragon. But it wasn’t exactly as we had imagined—antlers like a deer, a head like a camel, eyes like a rabbit… The details on its body were more abundant and delicate, far more divine than the image from the fused totem passed down through history. Even if it didn’t possess any intelligence, my soul was deeply shaken when it gazed at me. It was the endpoint of the evolutionary tree, the final master of planet Earth, the cradle of life.

“It’s time,” they said to me. “Please choose a human gene for fusion. You can make the decision by yourself. We believe you have that right.”

“About the zoophilia…” I tried to ask them again.

“No, Professor, we are no longer discussing that matter. You need to focus on the dragon.”

I fell silent, realising their final answer. Humans must make the right choice — we are the most unique ones, the gods that rise above all species, both in the past and in the future. Even if we were willing to contribute our genes to the endpoint of the evolutionary tree, it was only for our own sake.

They sent over the basic information and biological materials of the volunteers, who could be regarded as the best of men and women in the nation at my first glance—healthy, beautiful and intelligent. Of course, none of them were zoophiles, nor was there even a single homosexual. That was obvious, for even the slightest flaw recognised by the society in them could prevent them from getting into the list, which was rather funny, as we refused to acknowledge that zoophilia was natural, yet we were desperate to send the genes of the elite in our group to be merged into the dragon’s body.

Who should be chosen to integrate his genes into the dragon, endowing it with intelligence and character? They entrusted me with the decision, even allowing me to interview the candidates to find the best gene in my eyes. These young men and women… are they the chosen ones to merge their genes into the endpoint of the evolutionary tree?

Yet a different thought surged within me—

This is not humans’ decision to be made, but nature’s. In the late Devonian period, nature chose a brave fish that flapped its weak fins, opened its mouth to inhale oxygen, and struggled its way onto land, marking the beginning of life’s propagation on land. At the end of the Quaternary glaciation, nature selected a curious ancient ape that climbed down from the tree, attempted to stand on two legs, thus freeing its hands, leading to the flourishing of human civilisation. The history determined by nature will not be interrupted by human civilisation, but will continue into a very distant future.

Nature will choose the gene from a specific human whose behaviour is extremely different from those before him because his mission is so distant. He will join the dragon to create the ultimate endpoint of the evolutionary tree.

But whose gene should be put into the dragon?

Is he a so-called ‘normal’ person? Or a ‘pervert’ they speak of?

I finally had the answer in my mind.

I held my head in my hands, curling up in my chair.

He wasn’t completely gone. Yes, he would be back. His existence was meaningful, not just for me and Sasha, but for all species on this planet. He was part of the evolutionary tree heading towards its endpoint. And he left his mark on the world. This was his mission.

He was the fish that climbed onto land, the ape that left the treetops, the man who felt desire for apes… and at last, he was my child.

His genetic material remained preserved in the lab, serving as crucial evidence for my discovery of the theory of the convergence of the evolutionary tree. I took it out from the freezer, gazing at it for a moment before proceeding with the usual operation. I pressed the button to process his genetic data and the dragon’s genetic data with the ultimate virus and merged together. I had no doubt that human genes would endow the ultimate creature with intelligence. It was the endpoint, a species superior to humans, so it had to be blessed with intelligence.

This was the final touch that brought the dragon to life.

The Pacific Ocean looked deep and dark from the helicopter’s door.

Is it here? Hidden in the deep ocean? It certainly should be. How vast and expansive the ocean is. Billions of years later, humans will no longer be the masters of this planet. Groups of dragons will play and frolic here and establish their own civilisation. They will need no engines since they can soar through the sky with their own power, neither will they need metal containers to help them dive into the dark sea. They can go anywhere on this planet as they please, they don’t even need to eat like other animals as the genes derived from plants and prokaryotes will allow them to absorb energy directly from sunlight and geothermal energy.

They are the endpoint we cannot even imagine.

They are the ultimate life form.

“Professor, you’ve changed your mind! Why?” Fang Hong shout loudly in my ear, as the sound of the propeller is very noisy.

“Because I want you all to come back alive!”

“It’s dangerous!”

“Get all the soldiers ready!”

The helicopter landed on a small island with a lighthouse. We built a simple communication channel and soon got contact with an intermittent mysterious signal from the seabed.

“The submarines are already in position. Can you keep it calm? We’d better bring it back alive, or…” Fang Hong said anxiously.

“I’ll try my best,” I replied.

“The channel is connected,” the nearby radio operator said and handed me a microphone. “The audio signal will be transferred into electromagnetic waves so that it can receive it. I’m not sure if it can recognise you, professor, but… if it shows any signs of aggression, we will fire immediately. I know its life is crucial, but the lives of the soldiers are more important.”

I nodded and took the microphone.

“Are you there?” I spoke.

There was no response.

“Are you there? Is the ocean good? Is it beautiful?” I tried again.

The soldiers suddenly shouted, as they spotted a thin and upright tail breaking the surface of the water—electromagnetic waves couldn’t travel underwater, so it had to use its body as an antenna to communicate with us more easily. However, it undoubtedly revealed its position by doing this. Did it sense the approaching of submarines? I believed so, as it inherited the genes of a bat. When the submarines’ sonar waves hit it for positioning, it certainly heard the submarine at the same time.

“The ocean is beautiful, but there’s nothing in it. The smartest ones are the orcas, but they’re still too dumb. Only you humans are like me,” came the text over the radio signal.

“Is it you? Ah, it’s you!” It said suddenly. How could it recognise me? My voice had already been distorted by the signal. Oh yes, it might be able to smell me, as a dragon’s sense of smell can be extraordinary. After all, it became quite familiar with me.

“Let’s go back,” I urged.

“Back to that… cage?”

I couldn’t answer, but I couldn’t lie to it either. That beautiful, powerful, intelligent ultimate life form deserves the truth.

“Yes, that cage. We will study you there, and try to make you ‘beneficial’ to human beings. Your entire life, those long years to come, will be spent within that cage. We might compel you to work, study you for military purposes, find cures for terminal diseases through you, or even demand you to clean up leaking nuclear reactors… or simply keep you inside a cage for display… culturally speaking, you are the ancient totem we once believed in.”

The other side of the radio fell silent and no longer sent any text. Fang Hong and the others stared with wide eyes beside me, unable to believe I had spoken those truths. They still thought that I had come to deceive it. Maybe I did come to deceive it, with the original intention of asking it back into the cage. After all, there was nothing more important than humans’ safety. But still, I couldn’t betray my own conscience.

I couldn’t represent humanity; I could only represent myself. I respected it, this ultimate life form from billions of years in the future.

“I understand.” It gave a short reply, followed by a long silence again. However, according to the soldiers, its tail still remained above the surface, as if in contemplation.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” it responded briefly. Then, it added, “thank you for bringing me to the ocean.”

“Have you made your decision?” I asked.

“It’s a beautiful world. I just came too early.”

“You just came too early.”

That was our last exchange.

The soldiers sprang into action as its tail that served as the radio transmitter fell into the water. Then they saw the massive and glimmering dragon leap from the depths of the ocean and soar into the clouds, releasing lightning from its body, weaving through the clouds and shaking off raindrops, just as described in mythology. All soldiers were terrified, which was absolutely reasonable. As a species that feared tigers, how much greater was our fear in the presence of such a majestic creature that appeared ready to strike? Only I knew that it was not trying to attack anyone but simply doing what a dragon does—flying and displaying its powers, just like how it was normal for humans to walk and breathe. But other humans might never understand it. They were both arrogant and fearful of it, and thus, they felt compelled to imprison it or even take its life.

The soldiers’ voices became a cacophony, mingling with the thunder as the dragon stirred the storm, drowning out all sound around me.

“Fire! Fire!” the officers ordered as lightning struck.

The dragon was powerful, but still, it was made of blood and flesh, which means that it couldn’t be faster than a supersonic missile, nor could it withstand a barrage of concentrated fire. Were it in the sea, it might release lightning, use the seawater to retaliate, and dodge relatively slower torpedoes. But it flew straight up into the air, soaring, with no intention of hurting anyone, not even us who pointed weapons at it.

It has made its own choice.

Are all dragons this gentle, or is it just him? I don’t know, and I’ll never know.